


Vox Populi

by autobotscoutriella



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Pre-War Cybertron, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-29 16:46:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17207150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autobotscoutriella/pseuds/autobotscoutriella
Summary: Soundwave muses on his surroundings, or more specifically the people around him, from the perspective of a telepath.





	Vox Populi

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of an alternate Bayverse-with-TFP-elements I've been working on, in which outliers/point-one-percenters are considerably more of a thing than they are even in IDW. I haven't gotten any of the multi-part fics to posting length yet, but I've been working on it for about five years. Soundwave as a telepath was a fairly popular bit of fanon when I first started writing fic, and was the inspiration for the universe in the first place, so it seemed fitting that the first part of it I posted should be something from his perspective.

Telepathic listening in a crowded city square was a potentially dangerous pastime for anyone with enough ability to reach more than ten yards. Even on an ordinary day, Kaon's streets hummed with constantly shifting undertones of emotion, most of it intense and negative. Most mechs kept their EM fields tucked close to their frames in crowded spaces, muting the effects of brushing against someone, but telepathy required stronger measures to suppress--and these days, Kaon's city streets tended to boil over with levels of rage that could be felt all the way from Vos.

Today, ripples of unrest swept through the city square like waves before an ion storm, tension crackling around every EM field and a hurricane of emotions swirling above the gathering crowd. Anger and fear laced the air, not quite rising to fever-pitch intensity yet but growing with every passing minute.

Somehow, the Council, the Primes, and the Enforcers had remained oblivious to it for decades. None of them were telepaths, but it seemed so strong it was difficult to fathom how they could miss the rising embers of rebellion.

Soundwave took a step away from his two companions, pushing a firewall higher to mute the flickering presences distractingly pushing against his processor. Barricade was easier to silence; for all that his processor was constantly in motion, producing a constant hectic, pulsing presence, he made attempts to keep it under wraps. He had the desire, and usually the capacity, to avoid being passively read if he really wanted to. Blackout, on the other servo, stood out like a blazing beacon of raw, uncontrolled intensity that flared and dimmed seemingly at random, demanding more and more of Soundwave's attention to block him out and focus on the crowd. He was uncomfortable to stand next to for more than a few minutes at a time, and an irritating distraction even at the best of times. In Soundwave's professional opinion as a telepath, if any of Megatron's close associates were likely to push him past his well-controlled firewalls, mental blocks, and muting tactics, the helicopter would be the one.

But for the moment, it was only the work of a few seconds to filter out the nearest few mechs, enough to take a closer look at the mechs making up the crowds in the city square. Some individuals stood out like beacons--an aquatic-type outlier broadcasting her fury mixed with anticipation like a road flare, a young brand-new enforcer whose fear filtered through the crowd from the opposite side of the square, seething hatred and restlessness burning off a pair that might have been split-sparks or combiners, the shifting muted hum that marked a hyperchanger and stood out not for its intensity but for the apparent absence of any concrete presence to sense--

It would have been too easy to lose himself in the hurricane of sensory input, the maelstrom threatening to pull him in until he could no longer find the line where Soundwave ended and the rest of the crowd began. Already the edges were beginning to blur, presences pushing at his firewalls. He drew back, filtering until only the general mood of the crowd came through and forcing the thousands of voices to merge into one humming awareness with only one single point remaining apart, only a few dozen meters away.

Megatron was never difficult to zero in on. Some telepathy-resistant mechs could be, their firewalls keeping their signals muted to avoid notice, but the Lord Protector had never bothered with that level of subtlety. There was no need. Megatron's presence was a steel wall, impenetrable and apparently emotionless, showing only what he wished Soundwave to know. Among the swirl of unguarded emotion and flashes of thought, it was a jarring barricade he could have sensed from the other side of the city.

He confirmed the overall shifting mood of the crowd. They were angry, frightened, restless--and anticipatory. They were waiting. They would listen, if someone offered them an alternative to the caste system that drove the welling hatred underneath the tension. The people were ready.

The Primes and the Council had missed it, somehow--perhaps because they did not want to see it. They could not, or would not, listen to the voices of the people they claimed to serve. Soundwave could, and did.

A slight nudge to their fields, widely cast to reach as much of the crowd as possible, was all it took to pull that anticipation, and their attention, toward the silver mech standing beside the Temple steps.

Soundwave reached out toward Megatron with a single thought, the equivalent of a tap on the steel wall.

_/They are listening./_

_/Well done./_

No more needed to be said. Soundwave pulled back from Megatron, as much to avoid distracting himself as his Commander, and returned his attention to the reason he had come to Kaon in the first place.

Listening.

**Author's Note:**

> The original description for Megatron's presence as viewed by a telepath was "steel wall of Nope". I just couldn't justify Soundwave using that phrase, but I might get to use it for a different telepath in the same universe someday.


End file.
